False Prophets
by vodka straight
Summary: A number of substantial phone conversations connecting Pittsburgh to New York City.


Michael calls once every two weeks or so. His calls try to recapture the map-cap energy of midnight, but it's only nine-thirty and Brian can hear Hunter in the background.

"Let's go out."

"Way ahead of you." Brian will say from his bed, exhaling a puff of cigarette smoke.

"I don't hear music."

"I'm outside."

"With someone?"

"With some two."

"Oh. Well, call me tomorrow, we can get lunch or something."

"Uh huh."

Brian doesn't call, but not because he doesn't want to. He doesn't call for the same reason he never called—he knows that when people want you, they call you themselves, and that Michael is trying to convince himself that he still needs Brian when he doesn't.

"How's Michael?" Justin asks.

"Michael doesn't realize how good Michael is."

"When did you see him last?"

"Two weeks ago. We got lunch."

Lying to Justin isn't like real lying. It doesn't matter what words come out of his mouth, Justin knows Brian, so he doesn't have to know exactly what happened when.

"'Got lunch?' You sound ancient."

"I am ancient."

Justin laughs at that and Brian is a little calmer because of it.

"Chelsea?" he asks vaguely.

"Perfect. I know you hate to hear it."

"I'm glad. Maybe you'll finally stick to something." He hadn't meant it to sound so hostile. He meant Dartmouth, he meant PIFA and Daphne and the fiddler and the studio apartment. He hadn't meant—

"Brian." Justin says, after a pause.

"That wasn't what I meant."

A little laugh. "You know, you used to be better at talking."

"Well, I used to have more practice. Four walls aren't very good conversation."

Justin's quiet for a moment. "You want me to come down this weekend?"

"No."

"You want to come up? I can show you the new gallery."

"No, sunshine."

Another sigh. A pause.

"New York, Brian. It was made for you. Streets are crowded with Prada-soft footsteps and Armani-covered asses."

"And Gucci as far as the eye can see."

"And I think you'd like the women. They're… more like men."

Brian laughs. "Don't go straight on me. I've got to go."

"Come, Brian."

"Bye."

Justin sighs. "I love you."

Brian closes his eyes and almost throws the phone against the wall. Instead he holds it out at arms length for a moment, staring at it and trying to control the red-hot anger in his throat. He brings it back to his ear.

"Bye." he says flatly. The line clicks.

Brian marks time by Justin's phone calls. After about twelve of them, he gets this one:

"This is going to sound stupid."

Brian is clenching the phone against his shoulder as he strips out of his slacks and unbuttons his shirt. "I'll brace myself."

Nervous laughter. "Seriously. Don't laugh at me."

Brian sits down on the side of his bed in his underwear. "Unlikely."

"What exactly are the rules on… other people?"

Brian laughed. "Have you been celibate this whole time?"

"No, idiot. Like. Other things."

"Why, sunshine, did you meet someone?"

"Someone met me. Asked me to dinner."

"Oh. _Dinner_." Brian drawled.

"Yes."

"Who?"

A flippant sigh. "Some art queer. Cute. Irons his hair."

"Mm. Modern Boy Barbie. Ruffle his up-'do for me."

"Seriously, Brian."

Brian sighs. "Well, you obviously want to or you wouldn't ask."

"I want to go to dinner with anyone who wants to _pay_ for my dinner."

"You're living in a very modern city, Justin, the gentleman may wish to go Dutch."

"I don't know what that is but it can't be worse than fisting."

"Are you going to fuck him?"

Justin paused. "On the first date? I doubt it."

"But on the second." Brian continued. "Or maybe the third."

"I don't know."

"That's what you called to ask. Are you allowed to sleep with someone and to like him at the same time."

Justin sighed. "I guess. Sort of. Brian, we left this completely open-ended. We just kind of assumed that we would realign, things would fall into place on their own, and that hasn't happened. Mostly because of you being stupid. So I kind of want to know what we're doing, yes. We still talk more than once every week. I still love you very much. I mean, are we in a long distance relationship—"

"Oh my _god_."

"I know, I know," Justin snapped, "you don't like the language. Be a man and suck it up, would you please?"

Brian coughed out a dry laugh. "Go to dinner with him."

"Brian."

"Fuck him over the table, for all I care. Eat him for dessert. You're in New York, for fuck's sake, just don't _tell_ me about it!" Once Brian started yelling, everything tended to escape. "And stop saying you love me. You sound fucking ridiculous."

He could hear nothing from the other end of the line. For a moment he was sure Justin had hung up.

"Justin." he said quietly.

"I won't go to dinner." Justin said quietly.

Brian breathed again. "Then don't go."

"Okay."

"Okay."

Eventually Brian does go to lunch with Michael. They have absolutely nothing to talk about, because neither of them is sleeping around anymore. Michael talks about Hunter at college and Ben, who's just begun a lecture series after the release of his book. Brian feels bad and makes up a story about a Latino piano salesman, an unlocked door and the back of a closed baby grand. Michael laughs a little, but there is a presentablity about him now.

That night he goes back to the loft and gets drunk. This isn't anything new. But then, for the first time since he left, Brian picks up the phone and calls Justin.

"Hello?"

"Why didn't we get married."

There was a pause. "Who is this?"

"Who the fuck do you think this is?"

Another pause. A voice, away from the phone. "Justin, someone wants to know why you didn't marry him."

Brian is too drunk to feel embarrassed. He hears the static friction as the phone changes hands.

"What are you doing, Brian?" Justin's voice, this time—quiet, taught, a little pissed.

"Who was that guy?"

"I have friends over."

"Oh, a party."

"Sounds like you're having a party, too. I can smell the Jack from here."

Brian laughed. "Kinney, party of one."

"Drinking alone is one of the signs." Justin says ryely.

"Of fabulousness."

"Brian…"

"Why didn't we get married?"

Justin sighs. "Hold on." Brian hears the phone being covered and then Justin's muted voice. "It's Brian. I've got to take it."

Drunken, foreign voices:

"Tell him to get his ass up here!"

"Tell him to stop calling you."

The sound of a shushing noise and then a door closing, and silence.

"Why didn't we get married?" Brian asks for the third time, and he can hear himself starting to slur.

Brian hears a scoffing noise. "Brian. Why do you think?"

"I think we both freaked out at the last moment. I think you wanted to see if the grass really was greener on the other side."

A pause. "And you?"

"I stayed. I stayed because it's what I do."

"That isn't why we didn't get married."

"Why, then?"

"It was more complicated than that."

"Enlighten me."

Justin sighed. "Because you had no idea what to do with yourself. Because you fell in love for the first time at thirty-five, instead of being a normal person and doing it at seventeen. Because you assumed that you knew what you were doing when you never had a fucking clue."

Brian laughed. "So it was all my fault."

"Brian, remember the question about Socrates and the pig? Would you rather be Socrates: unbearably sad, brilliant, unsatisfied—or a pig: content and stupid. That's us."

"You're the pig, right?"

"When I'm without you, I'm fine. I've discovered that I am okay without you."

Brian can think of a million stupid things to say, but he doesn't say them.

"And when I'm with you sometimes I'm so unhappy I don't want to get out of bed. And sometimes I'm so ecstatically, achingly happy—"

"That you don't want _me_ to get out of bed?"

"Fuck you. Those aren't the times." Justin snapped suddenly, and Brian feels a little more sober. "Those times are great, but they aren't the best times. Stop being glib, you called me."

There was a long pause, and when Brian spoke again his voice was quiet and tight. "I would try not to hurt you."

Brian can almost hear Justin biting his bottom lip. "Honey."

Brian knows then that Justin can hear the rare emotion in his voice. He knows how pathetic he sounds, how drunk and weepy, and he knows that if he speaks at this moment he may actually weep. So it is one of the four times ever when Brian will let Justin get away with calling him "honey."

"I would try not to hurt you, too." Justin continues. "But we do hurt each other. All the time. And not always by accident."

"Well, we're not Ben and fucking Mikey. We could never just 'get along.' When we're together it's always...more." Brian says, and he can feel the desperate crack in his voice.

The line is still and silent.

Something important hangs there, fragile, small, alive—Brian can feel it. Something that is subject to the scheming, deviant goblin-prophet that steers their lives. He's an unpredictable little fucker. Brian wants to flick him off his cloud. Fuck prophecies and fate and star-crossed bullshit; fuck 'things happen for a reason' and 'if it's meant to be' and 'its only time.'

Brian's ready to be in charge of what happens next.

fin


End file.
